Jim, what about a system where the recommendation list is rebuilt for every 5th game a user rates? (or 8th or 10th if this is still resource-intensive?)

This wouldn’t disadvantage newer users who join up, rate a whole lot of games, then have to wait until the following day to see any recommendations. You wouldn’t want to exclude new users from seeing some of your really great Web 2.0 functionality.

Or, instead, maybe some ‘refresh recommended games’ button.

Also, to lower the games included in the algorythm, you could ignore any game below a particular rating (eg 2.0 or 2.5). Yeah?

I’ve done something like that at college – it was called ‘murder’. Basically everyone was given a water pistol, and a person to kill. You had to get them when noone else was looking (ie it was just you and them in a room), so everyone started travelling around the college in pairs to protect themselves. You’d have to call a friend to come out of your dorm room and pee. All the while still planning how to get your target, but knowing that someone is out to get you.

Then, once you have killed your target, you log the kill by calling a number and then you acquire the target of your target and continue killing.

Was cute, but yeah after a few days paranoia, most people generally get to the point: ‘hang on, i’m totally sick of this. Screw it.’

Also, can I ask what happened to ‘Recommended Games’? That was a really awesome way to go through games you haven’t played, with games you would likely enjoy appearing first… Would be cool to get it back at some stage.

OK, don’t know how I ended up at the above site, but this was my first real contact with an Alternate Reality Game (ARG).

Looks like it could be engaging. Has anyone here had any experience with other ARGs?

Imagine that geography may prevent my involvement in this (it’s a mighty swim from Sydney to LA) – looks like the aforementioned ARG is going to involve some sort of interactivity in ten major US cities.

I think the game is really hot and the game mechanics are novel and sexy, but the rewards/punsihment incentives for the game haven’t been fully fleshed out. It’s hard to really want to get gold for every customer, when every day pans out almost identically.

To be fair, isn’t think in some ways mimicking the games that are featured on the front page under ‘hot new games’ ? It would be cool though to have a repository of games that are ’greg’s picks’. That’s where I find a lot of cool new games without having to trudge through all recent submissions.

May you could rename to ’Greg’s underdogs’, or something, if your intention is to really pick games that are badgeless with lower ratings than deserved and never front paged?

I’m in Australia and I have to say I’m getting the trashiest ones the internet has to offer. You know the ones that say ‘out-drink this frat guy!’ and you have to click a button fast to out drink him. Then it opens some site where it asks you to enter your mobile phone number for a ‘love calculation’. Instead you get charged 7 dollars a week for a horoscope that doesn’t actually appear on your phone properly (OK, so that happened to me once).

Caimbul, you could also create an ‘artificial’ rightclick by telling players to hold shift while clicking. You can then store the click position and make a pop up menu. You’d would have to design and code that menu, though; might be a bit of a pain.

It will be interesting to see how this works. I can imagine a game without items being a bit dull with only character cards (I was thinking a la magic the gathering, spells, enchantments, etc.), so hopefully item games will be encouraged and maybe other card types introduced. It will also be interesting to see how we can acquire more cards, etc (trade for points, ante during battles, etc.)

It was silly of me to assume that badge creation is a simple process – i know too well from making my first game (which I attribute to inspiration form discovering kongregate) that a very simple product can take many hours of effort.

greg: I think learning a little more about the card game would be a move most users would really appreciate. I’m really interested to see how everything kongregate has to offer links together, and to see how the cards and points that I’ve blindly acquired are going to be used. And don’t think I’m in any way blaming you (personally or professionally) for these alleged shortfalls. I do think that perhaps kongregate could push further toward attracting quality flash developers to make some sweet games, but you’ve obviously done that with this card game and that’s what is in the works. Thanks for replying to my whine. Hope it’s all going well, keeping us more in the know – blog-styles – would be muchly appreciated. (and good luck with the gf and the WoW)

Sylicas: Sorry, my experience with the badges thus far have been completely unglitched, didn’t even realise there were lots of issues (haven’t been a big frequenter of these forums, as you can see, so this thread may have come a bit out of nowhere. And I do think the quality and quantity of submissions is in part the responsibility of the Kongregate. Sure, they are made by users, but Kongregate needs to attract goods users (developers) for us (with cash, prizes, advertising, other incentives, etc.)… Ever been to the hundreds of other crappy flash community sites that try to tie everything together with points and prizes? Why are they crappy? Because the games suck arse.

Apologies if said bitching and moaning is misplaced, feel free to move me elsewhere on forums if needs be.

(one thing: I understand that the site is in beta and so maybe it’s too soon to yelp ’i’m bored!‘, considering we’re not using a finished product. I don’t think that’s a valid excuse to denounce a call for a bit more community involvement and maybe a few new developments? Maybe I’m flying solo on this one.)

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